It’s dated before you were born!

Gee whiz, he couldn’t have half read it when he handed it to me. There wasn’t any envelope, only an old sheet of paper, all yellow, and it had been folded so long that it almost fell apart where it was creased. It was filled with writing in lead pencil and it was so old and dirty that I could hardly read what it said. I guess Pee-wee would have stumbled through it himself, except that one thing that his eye happened to hit first of all, knocked him out.

“Now you see!” he said, all out of breath, he was so excited; “now you see! Look there!”

He pointed the pencil to one part of the letter where it said, bags of gold.

bags of gold

“And look there, too,” he panted out, all the while pointing with the pencil, “‘dropped in his tracks with a mortal wound.’ So now; you think you’re so smart, with your wheelbarrows and sewing machines! You don’t—you don’t find bags of gold in time tables and commutation tickets—do you? You make me tired! This is a—a—deep laid plot, that’s what it is. You know what mortal wounds are, I hope!”

there

dropped in his tracks with a mortal wound

now

“All right, Kid,” I said; “you win. Only don’t stab me a mortal wound with the lead pencil, and give me a chance to read it.”

“If—if—if bags of gold aren’t romance,” he shouted; “then, what is? Tell me that.”

Honest, that kid would find some kind of plots and adventures in a vacuum cleaner.

CHAPTER II—WE READ THE LETTER

It was pretty hard to read that writing, because it was so old and kind of smeary, and it took the three of us to make the letter out. Even we had to make up some words to fit into places where the creases were. But anyway, this is what the letter said:

March 7th, 1895

Dear Ann:—

This to tell you how I am robbed of two bags of gold by train robbers that derailed this train north of Steuben Junction and have slight injury to arm from bullet of one scoundrel. Two of our 

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